CHAPTER II
THE DEIFICATION OF WOMAN
(THE FIRST FORM OF METAPHYSICAL EROTICISM)
(a) The Love of the Troubadours
In the long chapter on the Birth of Europe, I have attempted to bring corroborative evidence from all sides in support of my contention that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed the birth and gradual development of a new value of the highest importance: the value of individuality, impersonated by the citizen of Europe. We are now prepared to realise the psychological importance and the importance for progress of one of the greatest results of this new development—the spiritual love of man for woman. From this subject, the specific subject of my book, I shall not again digress.
We are aware that the man of antiquity (and also the Eastern nations of to-day) recognised between man and woman only the sexual bond, uninfluenced by personal and psychological motives, and leading in Greece to the institution of monogamy on purely economical and political grounds. In addition to this bond there existed a very distinct spiritual love, evolved by Plato and his circle and projected by one man on another member of his own sex. In the true Hellenic spirit this love aspired to guide the individual to the ideal of perfection, the beauty and wisdom of the friend serving as stepping-stones in the upward climb. In Christianity the spiritual love of the divine became the greatest value and the pivot on which the emotions turned. The primitive Christian scorned the body, his own as well as that of his fellow; he despised beauty of form, and regarded only the divine as worthy of love. Woman was disparaged and suspected; all thinkers, down to Thomas and Anselm, looking upon her merely as a snare and a pitfall. The period discussed in detail in the foregoing chapter ushered in a new and, until then, unknown feeling. In crude and conscious contrast to sexuality, deprecated alike by classical Greece and primitive Christianity, spiritual love of man for woman came into existence. It was composed of three clearly distinguishable elements: the Platonic thought, maintaining that the greatest virtue lies in the striving for absolute perfection; the entirely spiritual love of the divine, sufficient in itself, and representing the final purpose of life, as developed by Christianity; and the dawning knowledge of the value of personality. From these three elements: the noblest inheritance of antiquity, the central creation of Christianity, and the pivot of the new-born European spirit, sprang the new value which is the subject of the second stage of eroticism. The position of woman had changed; she was no longer the medium for the satisfaction of the male impulse, or the rearing of children, as in antiquity; no longer the silent drudge or devout sister of the first Christian millenary; no longer the she-devil of monkish conception; transcending humanity, she had been exalted to the heavens and had become a goddess. She was loved and adored with a devotion not of this earth, a devotion which was the sole source of all things lofty and good; she had become the saviour of humanity and queen of the universe.
The rejection of sensuality is an inherent part of the Christian religion; only he who had overcome his sinful desires was a hero. Spiritual love was as yet unknown, only the sexual impulse was realised, and that was looked upon as a sin; there was but one way of escape: renunciation. This view is very clearly expressed in the legends of Alexius, and in Barlaam and Josaphat (which although of Indian origin, had found a German interpreter and were known all over Europe). The latter legend tells how Prince Josaphat, a devout Christian, married a beautiful princess. On his wedding night he had a vision of the celestial paradise, the dominion of chastity, and the earthly pool of sin. Recognising in his bride a devil who had come to tempt him, he left her and fled into the desert. Many legends illustrate the incapacity of the first millenary to realise the relationship between the sexes in any other sense. Woman was evil; the struggle against her a laudable effort.
Very probably the stigmatising of all eroticism during that long spell of a thousand years was necessary. Only the unnatural condemnation of love in its widest sense, a hatred of sex and woman such as was felt by Tertullian and Origen, could result in the reverse of sexuality—purely spiritual love with its logical climax, the deification and worship of woman. There can be no doubt that the Christian ideal of chastity was largely responsible for the evolution of the ideal of spiritual love. The identity of love and chastity was propounded—in sharp contrast to sexuality and—more particularly amongst the later troubadours, such as Montanhagol, Sordello, and the poets of the "sweet new style" in Italy—with a distinct leaning towards religious ecstasy.
Infinite tenderness pervaded the nascent cult of woman. It seemed as if man were eager to compensate her for the indignity which he had heaped upon her for a thousand years. His instinctive need to worship had found an incomparable being on earth before whom he prostrated himself. She was the climax of earthly perfection; no word, no metaphor was sufficiently ecstatic to express the full fervour of his adoration; a new religion was created, and she was the presiding divinity. "What were the world if beauteous woman were not?" sang Johannes Hadlaub, a German poet.
Once more I must revert to personality, the fundamental value of the European. In antiquity, even in Greece and Rome, personality in its higher sense did not exist. The hero was the epitome of all the energies of the nation, a term for the striving of the community; the statesman was the incarnate political will of the people; even the poet's ideal was the representation of the Hellenic type in all its aspects. Agamemnon was no more than the intelligent ruler, Achilles the headstrong hero, Odysseus the cunning adventurer. The individual was a member and servant of the tribe, the town, the state; each man knew that his fellow did not essentially differ from him; and even at the period when Hellas was at its meridian the individuals were, compared to modern men, but slightly differentiated. But the Greek differed from the Oriental, the barbarian, inasmuch as he felt himself no longer a component part of nature, but realised his distinct individuality.